By February 2003, after nearly
two years of agonizing over City Councilman Michael Feinstein's unwillingness
to account for the $10,000 he had allegedly misappropriated, Green Party
officials were at a standstill.

The county party had decided
to “move on” by leaving the Pico office that was at the center of the
controversy. Bill Pietz, who had donated the money, vowed not to take
any legal action. And the state party decided it would be “bad politics”
to do anything more than disseminate a letter disassociating itself from
Feinstein.

Fed up with the stalemate,
county party treasurer Bob Morris decided to take matters into his own
hands.

Under state law, Morris discovered,
a treasurer must account for money raised in the name of the organization,
and after receiving a copy of the $10,000 check from Pietz addressed to
the “GPLAC” (Green Party of Los Angeles County), he decided, “It needed
to be done.”

Feinstein had ignored repeated
requests to turn over records from the Green Party account the former
mayor had opened in his name with the blessing of the state party. Only
a judge, Morris decided, had the power to pry open the bankbooks.

“I have no personal vendetta
against Mike (Feinstein), but that money didn’t belong to him. It wasn’t
his to spend” Morris recently told The Lookout. “What happens to
him is out of my hands. If Mike doesn’t have anything to hide, then everything
will go away.

“I find it disturbing that
the state party has done nothing for years and has continued to do nothing,”
Morris said. “‘Oh, we can’t do anything at all because it might bad?’
That’s not a Green thing to do. If I wanted to hide facts, I’d be a Republican.

“It was obvious to anybody
who believed in Green values there was overwhelming evidence that serious
violations might have occurred,” Morris said.

In late February, Morris filed
a criminal complaint with the Santa Monica Police Department charging
Feinstein with stealing the check. As is common practice when a charge
involves a City official, the complaint was forwarded to the District
Attorney. Morris also filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices
Commission (FPPC).

While Morris told no one about
the criminal complaint, he said he decided to file with the FPPC after
consulting with the government agency, three lawyers, and state treasurer
Mike Wyman. They all agreed that it was his legal responsibility to file.

“To the best of my knowledge,
no one's under any legal obligation to file a complaint with the FPPC,”
Wyman said at a meeting of state officials in January, according to meeting
minutes. “But,” he added, “there were checks made out to GPCA (Green Party
of California) and GP of LA, (which) means that somebody is liable.”

Morris’ decision to act without
the county’s authorization would prompt his removal as treasurer and trigger
Pietz’s resignation from the Green party. But some party members would
defend Morris’ actions.

“Someone had to step up,”
said Ginny Case, the County Council member who originally discovered financial
discrepancies that led to suspicions about Feinstein’s money management.
“I probably would have done the same thing.

“There had come a point when
we completely exhausted dealing with Mike, and when the check came out,
there was no way to deny that something very wrong had happened to county
council,” Case said.

The filing, she added, was
“a big step.” Because Feinstein was like a father figure for the local
party, she compared it to “calling the police if your parents were dealing
drugs.”

*****

City Councilman Kevin McKeown,
the state representative of the county Greens, was the first person Morris
told about his plans to file a complaint with the FPPC. McKeown -- who
did not know about the criminal filing -- neither tried to dissuade him,
nor would he inform the County Council of the impending action against
his City Council ally.

“It wasn't my job to notify
the Council County of what (Morris) was going to do,” McKeown told The
Lookout. “It’s not like the County Council could have talked Bob out
of this. There was no decision to be made.”

Telling only the county coordinators,
but keeping the County Council in the dark, McKeown authored an email
informing the State Party of the filing, a step state officials had been
reluctant to take.

“We know there is trepidation
at the state level about this action,” wrote McKeown, “but Los Angeles
feels more than adequate time has passed for other options to be explored.
Continued delay and denial about The Check no longer seem viable, on legal,
ethical and purely practical grounds.

“Representing almost 30,000
Greens, the GPLAC finds itself unable to raise funds and serve our function,
given the mistrust in Green finances the recent news stories have spread,"
McKeown wrote, referring to articles that had appeared in local papers.
"Our reputation as a party of clean finances, transparency and accountability
is at stake.

“Even absent a strict legal
requirement to file,” McKeown wrote, “many in LA are convinced reporting
the incontrovertible facts about this single aspect of what has happened
is simply the right thing to do… We do not ask for permission,” McKeown
concluded. “We ask for your support as we do what we must. ”

The email would reassert McKeown’s
objections to Feinstein’s activities, which had “vanished” just before
the mayor pro tem’s 2002 reelection bid. In fact, at a November County
Council meeting shortly after his reelection, McKeown had invited Feinstein,
who he hoped to succeed as mayor, to make an offer extending the county’s
occupancy of the Pico office.

When Feinstein presented the
offer, “there was much general concern,” according to meeting minutes.
County Council members Denise Robb and Pietz “declared that the council
must break from the office and move on.” Morris argued that the local
party “made no use of the office.”

McKeown was virtually alone
in wanting to stay. If the offer “was for free rent he thought that was
a good idea,” according to the minutes.

Within a month, McKeown once
again would reverse his position.

“You could see a sharp twist
just within a few weeks,” said Coby Skye, a County Council member.

In December, McKeown would
vote with the County Council to “move out completely” from the Pico storefront
and set up a virtual office.

*****

On December 10, 2002, Mayor
Pro Tem McKeown sat on the City Council dais in front of a packed chamber.
The City Council was about to cast a vote that could make or break his
dream of becoming the next Green mayor of Santa Monica.

McKeown felt he deserved the
post. He had served several months longer than Richard Bloom, the only
other member of the Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR) council
majority who had not held the mostly ceremonial post. In addition, a month
earlier, McKeown had finished a close second in a field of nine contenders
vying for three open council seats.

Afraid he would not have the
support to serve the full two-year term that his Green predecessor and
political benefactor Michael Feinstein was wrapping up that night, McKeown
was willing to compromise. He would share the term with Bloom.

Councilman Ken Genser opened
the nomination process by making a motion to split the two-year term between
the two, but the motion failed for lack of a second.

Councilman Herb Katz then
nominated Council member Pam O'Connor for two years. But O'Connor, who
had already served two separate one-year terms, declined to serve when
others had not had the chance. Instead, she nominated Bloom.

McKeown turned toward Feinstein,
his Green party colleague, who had used the post to train the national
spotlight on both the Green Party and a city that prided itself on its
sustainable policies.

“Are there any other nominations
for mayor?” asked City Clerk Maria Stewart, who was running the meeting
until a mayor was elected.

McKeown stared at Feinstein
in apparent anger and disbelief. Feinstein leaned forward and looked down
the dais to the right.

“No other nominations for
mayor,” Stewart said.

Feinstein and McKeown looked
to the left. Seeing nothing, McKeown turned back to Feinstein, who double-checked
the dais to the right.

“I will call the roll for
Council member Bloom to be mayor for two years,” Stewart said.

McKeown looked at Feinstein,
then at the audience, then leaned back.

Bloom would be elected with
a 6 to 0 vote (Katz abstained). McKeown would be reelected to two more
years as mayor pro tem, with Katz and Councilman Bob Holbrook abstaining.

Party members would point
to Feinstein’s failure to nominate McKeown as the critical turning point
in their relationship.

“He got screwed out of that
position,” said County Council member Skye. “Kevin was apparently very
upset by this and was ready to move out of the (Pico) office. There was
no sign prior to that time that Kevin was supporting a move out of the
office.”

“Mike and I have been good
friends for along time,” McKeown told The Lookout. But, he added,
the two “haven’t spoken for months.”

Asked if that night played
a role in his about-face concerning the office, McKeown responded, “I
go on with my life.”

*****

Shortly after McKeown failed
to win the nod as mayor, he would take part in the State Party’s efforts
to undermine Feinsein’s dream of putting the Pico storefront at the center
of national and international Green politics.

In January McKeown raised
no objections to sending a state letter that would thwart the Federation
of the Green Parties of the Americas from accepting Feinstein’s offer
to use the storefront for the international party’s Western Hemispheric
office network.

The following month, McKeown
was instrumental in a decision by the State Party to author a second letter.
Sent without the necessary 80 percent consensus, the letter warned national
officeholders of the potential pitfalls of attending a conference at the
Pico office that Feinstein had been planning for two years, according
to minutes.

“I feel very uncomfortable
with what the office had brought upon the party, very uncomfortable circumstances,”
McKeown told The Lookout. “We were very concerned the people would
get pulled into this rather murky situation.”

McKeown would be the welcoming
speaker at the conference.

*****

When Pietz, who had donated
20 percent of his income to the party, found out what Morris had done,
he snapped. After nine years of fighting for a cause he believed in, Pietz
resigned from every level of the Green Party -- local, state, and national.
He would no longer be a registered member of the party he helped build.

“There is no party I believe
in anymore,” said Pietz, who is now registered as “decline to state,”
a status with no party affiliation.

“I’ve been hacking away for
two years trying to make something good out of this,” said Pietz, “I just
reached the end of my rope.

“Resigning was the only thing
I could think of that could possibly send a message -- if we’re going
to have a grown-up-for-real organization, people have to respect the decision
of a group, or you got no group.

Morris’ action, and the letters
the state party began generating in January 2003, only served to drive
the wedge deeper between Feinstein and his followers and the official
party he helped build. The letters in particular caused many party officials
to choose sides.

While McKeown moved up to
become a state representative for the County Council, Feinstein resigned
from some of his key posts at the local, state and national levels in
2002, when he was still Mayor of Santa Monica.

Feinstein handed in his walking
papers after the state party “betrayed” him in the legal negotiations
-- when state officials refused to acknowledge their role in setting up
the office -- and the local party began to publicly accuse him of stealing
Pietz’s $10,000 check.

“The dysfunctional mishandling
of the Santa Monica office told me that my time with the Green party would
be better spent not working within the bureaucracy that just betrayed
me,” Feinstein said. Instead, the former mayor would “apply my scarce
time to building the party that I had founded.”

Officially, Feinstein, who
had put Santa Monica on the national map as a Green party bastion -- attracting
the attention of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times
-- would step behind the scenes.

The former mayor would serve
in an advisory capacity on the national level, return to work on the state
and national parties’ newsletters and attend to the Green Web sites he
helped create to track voter registration, Green candidates and election
results.

Despite holding no official
position, Feinstein also continued building the party. He organized the
Green officeholders conference that would kick off an international network
of elected officials. He also continued cultivating a project to link
the Federation of the Green Parties of the Americas to the U.S. Greens
with his Pico office, which was to be one of a “tri-office network” spanning
the Western Hemisphere.

“For anyone who thinks I took
my marbles and left, that I was hurt by what happened, I’m still deeply
committed to creating a viable third party,” Feinstein said. “This situation
has not dissuaded me from that conviction.”

His activities alarmed the
state party.

“Feinstein is no long mayor
now and he started to reassert his activism as a GP member on virtually
every level, local, state, national and international,” state party treasurer
Mike Wyman said at the state party meeting in January 2003.

Feinstein’s actions, particularly
his alleged use of the Pico office to raise funds, worried state party
members, who wrote several letters expressing their concerns.

But the response to the letters
only reinforced Feisntein’s influence in the party.

The letter warning elected
officials about attending the officeholders conference was largely ignored,
with atendees from as far away as Sweden and Hawaii showing up. Another
letter, intended to thwart the Federation of the Green Parties of the
Americas’ move into the office, was also “totally ignored,” according
to the minutes from the January meeting.

“We were told that the GPCA's
letter was totally ignored by the Federation,” said Jo Chamberlain, a
state coordinator. “I know these people, and I wouldn't be at all surprised
to drive down to that office next week and see some of them working in
there.”

In fact, some high-ranking
party members came to Feinstein’s defense, highlighting the widening rift
that had now reached from the local grassroots to the highest levels of
the party.

In an email to national Green
party officials, who are the liaisons to international Green groups, State
party coordinator Ricardo Newbery defended Feinstein’s credibility and
criticized the state party’s handling of the controversy.

“Concerns over the disposition
of funds and the internal accountability of its leadership may be warranted,”
Newbery wrote, “but the near-hysterical crisis over fears of heavy FPPC
sanctions (caused by Feinstein’s fundraising) seem excessive and unwarranted.”

Nearly two years after the
funding controversy embroiled the nation’s largest state and local Green
parties in their biggest crisis, the sleepy storefront on Pico Boulevard
is still standing and Michael Feinstein -- who has yet to turn over the
books -- still holds the key.

“The Pico office is off the table
for the moment,” State Coordinator Michael Borenstein said, “but that office
is going to continue haunting us for some time.”